Volunteer Spotlight: Monica Mora

Photo credit: (cropped from original version): Urban Vision Studios

We first met Monica when she volunteered for our wellness clinics. We’re so grateful this Vintage High senior chose Napa Humane as her capstone project this spring! (Spoiler alert: she got an A!)

Monica’s Story:

I was very nervous about my senior capstone project, because it was the first year that the school had done something like this. We had no idea where to even start when we were assigned to our groups. I didn’t want to settle for something small. I wanted to make a difference in our community, not just get a passing grade. My group started getting anxious when we heard other groups had already started planning their event, because we still had no plan about what we were going to do. A week had gone by with nothing done, which started to affect our grades since we were getting graded each week on the progress we were making.

I decided to take it upon myself to decide which nonprofit we were going to help. I chose Napa Humane, where I have been volunteering for almost a year now. Napa Humane hosts a few free pet wellness clinics a year where people are able to take their pets to get free services such as vaccines, check-ups, and microchips, and even to schedule future appointments for their pets to get neutered or spayed at a low cost. I think that these types of wellness clinics are important, and are very much needed in our community because not everyone has the ability to take their pets to the vet.

Planning an event to raise money for Napa Humane wasn’t so easy, and my group and I quickly found this out. We had many ideas that we wished we could have done, but which were simply too difficult to accomplish on our own and with limited time. Our first idea was to host a movie downtown, but we didn’t realize we needed a lot of paperwork and licenses to be able to have a movie night at Veterans Park. We decided to host a movie night at Vintage High School instead, and we made a plan to host it on a set weekend. But when the day arrived, it turned out the theater was double booked. So there went our event.

As our due date was getting closer, we had absolutely no idea what would come of our project. I finally decided to make a GoFundMe page to raise money for Napa Humane. Our goal was to raise $1000 total by our senior capstone due date, which was May 30. I honestly thought that I would make maybe $100 from it. But as I spread the word on my senior project to every social media account I had, I began receiving many shares.  My mom also helped a whole lot spreading the word with her Facebook page, which really made a difference. She knew how important this was to me and how hard it was for me to do on my own because I have a busy schedule with school, work, and volunteer work.

I ended up raising $1046.06 with the help from my mom. It really warmed my heart that so many people took time out of their day to read my goals for my project and why it was so important to me, shared my posts on social media, and contributed money to my cause.  Although I wasn’t able to host an event on my own, I reached my fundraising goal and I am happy that I will be able to make a small difference by donating all the money that I collected to Napa Humane, so that they can continue to do the amazing work that they do. I hope that I can continue to do more things like this and help out my community, as this experience has taught me a lot and I value the lessons that I have learned from it.

I presented my senior capstone project on May 30, 2018 – and I got an A!
Photo of Monica with Wendi Piscia, Executive Director; Lisa Alexander, Program Director; and her mom, Delia Gutierrez.

Want to follow in Monica’s footsteps and help the animals in our community? Check out some fun fundraising ideas as well as our volunteer opportunities.